Why do we have to contract our throat when swallowing water? I mean it could just slide right down to our tummies.
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Our nom nom hole is shared with our breathing hole. Contracting our throat makes sure whatever we eat doesn’t go down our breathing hole (there’s a flap called the epiglottis that will cover it when we swallow). The contractions also ensure that food and drink only goes one-way to the stomach and not back up.
The pipe to our food (esophagus) and pipe for breathing (trachea) are both connected to the throat.
When you need to swallow, you close this little flap called the epiglottis, which blocks the breathing passage until you’re done swallowing.
It can be done, have you even seen one of those videos where people empty a whole bottle of water in like 1s? that what they’re doing, but talking from experience cause I’ve done it before it’s a scary thing to do cause if it goes wrong and into your lungs that would be pretty bad
Basically, 2 things
1. You don’t wanna breathe in what you’re drinking/eating. Both your stomach, and your lungs connect at the throat. Lungs are for air only.
2. You also don’t want anything in your stomach accidentally working its way back up. You ever taste your own vomit? Not pleasant.
When you swallow a flap blocks the airway and food and drink goes down the right pipe. Once in a great while you fuck up and breathe in at the same time leaving you coughing and hacking spraying whomever is in front of you with soda, liquid, or fresh chewed particulate food matter.
If you get seriously injured, stroke, etc or even simply old age you can lose this ability to block your airway. If you don’t already have one then they will put in a tube that goes through your nose to your stomach to give you substance. If it appears you’ll never gain your ability to swallow then they’ll put what is called a peg tube directly through your abdomen into your stomach and sustain you that way.
It isn’t necessary. I mastered the art of – I’ve always just called it “opening your throat” – when I was maybe nine years old. I believe it’s the same technique sword swallowers use.
True story. When I was a kid, there was a contest announced on the radio, held at a local 7-11 that day. Whoever could drink a bottle of Orange Crush the fastest would win a copy of B.J. Thomas’s new album “Everybody Loves a Rain Song”. I rode my bicycle there as fast as I could, and got there on time. Seven other people had shown up, mostly kids but two adults as well. The broadcast the thing live on air, and when they said “go”, I did my thing and just poured it down.
The radio guys were like, “Now this guy looks OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT LITTLE BOY GO!!!” I won the album and was the most famous kid on my street for a couple of weeks.
I quickly discovered that it didn’t work with root beer. The level of carbonation was too high, and it would come back foaming out of my mouth and up my nose, which made me stop.
The album was crap, by the way.
You’ve got two pipes in your throat, bud, your esophagus and your trachea. One’s the food hole and one’s the air hole, and they can’t both be open at the same time. Most of the time your air hole is open and your food hole is closed. But when it’s time to swallow something, we do a quick closure of the air hole and open up the food hole for a few seconds, and then close it again and open the air hole back up.
To add to what the others have said, there’s also the fact that just sliding would be effected by gravity. if your body just let it flow, you could only drink while upright. we are primates, many of our ancestors spent their lives in the trees, and therefore likely sideways a good chunk of the time, or even hanging upside down to drink from a river or whatever. just as well, as without this feature of our anatomy, we couldn’t explore space!
not sure I’m right..
there are 2 tubes in throat: for air and for food.
usually the tube for air is open and the tube for food is closed.
when we eat/drink something, we need to open the tube for food and close the tube for air.
Also that is why you shouldn’t talk while eating (talking opens the air tube and food can get into it)
To close the way to the lungs as it is a T-junction(in real it’s more like up side down Y) to stomach and lungs. And the same with air, it close the way to stomach.
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